Check out the flotrack interview below. I love it when she talks about UCR's "sleeper" status (so true!), and implicitly refers to people's general lack of awareness of Latinas in track and field. She says, "People are starting to ask who's Riverside? Who's this little girl, this Mexican girl from Riverside?" You can see the pleasure she takes from defying the limits of people's imagination by being just that good at what she does.

I also love her response to the question: "At the start of the season could you have seen yourself as second in the nation?" The question seems to prove the point she made about 30 seconds earlier: People underestimate her.

How does she answer that question? With a twinkle in her eye, and no-bullshit "Yeah."

Feedback? Let me know what you think. Just an FYI: all comments posted to this blog are recorded, whether I publish them or not. I do not publish generally hateful comments - whether they be directed at me or at players and teams or other readers. I appreciate reader feedback, especially from those whose contributions add nuance and complexity to the story.

About From a Left Wing

Jennifer Doyle lives in Los Angeles and teaches at the University of California, Riverside. She wrote From a Left Wing from late 2007 until late 2013. Scroll through categories below for writing about gender, the international women's game, Los Angeles fútbol and more. You can read the preface to her most recent book here: Hold It Against Me: Difficulty and Emotion in Contemporary Art. Sometime in the near future, this whole blog will be taken down and archived, as she prepares to publish a book anchored in this writing.